On day 6 in Bisti my son and I went to the unofficial north parking area for access to the northern portion of Bisti Wilderness. Neither of us had previously been to this portion of Bisti, so we were truly exploring. I had GPS coordinates to a few of the northern features that I had gleaned from online research, but rather than heading towards any of my GPS coordinates, we just wandered around on an exploration hike today.
Shortly after crossing the deep drainage at one end of the parking lot, we found an abandoned well.
This well is not very deep, but it would not be good to fall into this, while hiking in the dark, as we usually do in the early morning on our way out for sunrise photos and in the evening on our way back from sunset photography.
Continuing to follow the broad open wash/valley area, we could see features on the top of hills in the distance, so we headed towards those.
From a distance, the features above looked like three distinct hoodoos, so I nicknamed these the Hoodoo Trio. On a subsequent visit to this area in May (more photos and blogs from that visit will be posted later in the summer or early fall), I used these features as primary navigation points to and from destinations in this area.
That is my son hiking near this hoodoo navigation beacon.
Hiking in a wash on the west side of the Hoodoo Trio, we eventually worked our way up to a plateau area, encountering a Hoodoo rich area that we called the “Valley of Hoodoos”. The photo above is near our exit point from the valley onto the plateau. (During my May visit here, I found an easier way to get to this area and also a short cut to get from this plateau back to the north parking area).
If my memory serves me well, I think we exited this valley at the blue arrow, hiking up through the Valley of Hoodoos onto the plateau. In May, I found it easier to follow the wash along the left side of the photo, exiting at the green arrow. There is one big step up on the green arrow route on the way out, then a big step down, when returning on this route. Other than that big step it is an easy route.
After exiting the Valley of Hoodoos we very soon came to this “Red Rock Garden” area. Walking through the rock garden, we found many interesting features, some of which, I recognized from our first visit to Bisti in 2011. At that time, we came from the south parking area; but it is much easier and quicker to get to this portion of Bisti from the unofficial north parking area.
The features in the above photo are on the plateau, just over a hill from the rock garden. My son named the hoodoo in the foreground here the Tongue Hoodoo. I think it is obvious how he came up with that name. I think the other large hoodoo in the left background is one that someone called The Pedestal.
A wing like hoodoo with a hole in it is shown above.
The same hoodoo with the hole, but from the top side. Holes in such rocks seem to be common here.
Just to the south of this area, we came to a very deep drainage, on the other side of which were other interesting features, but we did not see an easy way down into that drainage. We did see someone photographing features in the drainage and he motioned towards an access point, but we were running out of time on this scouting trip, so we did not attempt to find our way down, deciding it best to head back.
We came back to scout more in this area on our last day here and I will blog about that in a subsequent post.
My son and I returned to the “Scalloped Rocks” area of Bisti for sunrise photography on day 6 in Bisti March, 2019. This morning’s shoot was frustrating for me. I had a malfunction with my remote/intervalometer that resulted in the camera shooting continuously, just as I was composing what I thought would be my best shot of the morning.
Another of my shots, that I thought would be really good, turned out to have much too shallow a depth of field. It looked good in my quick review in the camera LED screen, but apparently, I did not inspect it closely enough and maybe my fingers were so cold at that time that I was not using my best judgement.
A shot across the area just before sunrise is shown above.
And another pre-sunrise shot from a different point of view is above.
While my camera was shooting continuously, due to the remote release malfunction, there were numerous images captured, which were all trash; but I decided to make use of the one above, since it has interesting abstract photographic features, which I do not think I could have purposely created.
I finally captured the image above, after managing to remove the remote release with my fumbling, numb fingers on this cold morning. Valuable time was lost as I dealt with the equipment problem and I think I missed the best pre-sunrise light composition here; but at least I got this silhouette of a window with the sunrise sky in the background, before the sun was completely up.
The evening of the fifth day in Bisti, my son and I decided to shoot sunset photos in an area, which we think is on BLM land. At least we know it is outside the Bisti Wilderness proper area. It is an area that we accessed via a short spur road off of the road to the unofficial parking area for Bisti North parking.
It was a cloudy day without great sunset light, so I converted the shots presented in this post to monochrome.
The photo above is my favorite from this shoot. There are dramatic clouds and hints of rain falling from the clouds, interesting rocks in the foreground and middle ground.
We had spotted this little natural bridge or window on an earlier scout of this area.
And another little window shot that I like better than the previous one, possibly because of the more dramatic clouds and the more interesting foreground.
The shot above is what I consider a minimalistic shot. The objects in the photo are limited, but there are dramatic clouds, interesting geologic features and multiple leading lines in the barren foreground, which hints at the vast openness of this area.
The shot above is another minimalistic shot of the same basic features as in the previous shot, but with a different point of view. In this case I have emphasized the broad area around the narrow drainage patterns that are acting as leading lines into the photo with the clouds adding drama to the scene.
I like the multiple tiers in the rock formations in this photo with the dramatic cloud backdrop.
This rock feature looks like a bearded lizard to me, hence the title of the photo. I’ve added a lens vignette, shifting it to the left to focus on the “head” of the lizard or whatever imaginary creature one might think this looks like.
This hoodoo reminds me of a large turtle, but one might imagine it as some other exotic or alien creature.
This photo does not have the greatest depth of field, but I still like it. I used the flat rock wings or hoodoos running diagonally from bottom left towards the upper right to lead the viewers eye into the photo towards the feature on the horizon in the upper right. I wish I could find these dramatic clouds on nice sunny sunset or sunrise shoots, while still allowing for great light on the photo subjects.
This wraps up the highlights of day 5 sunset shooting in the great vastness of one of New Mexico’s wonderful desert areas.
We returned to the area just outside the Bisti Wilderness on the north end of Bisti for sunrise photography on day 5 of our stay in Bisti.
I use a remote shutter release to avoid camera shake that results when physically pressing the on camera shutter button. Sometimes the remote shutter release button gets pressed accidentally, especially when moving the camera, maybe when walking with the camera on a tripod with the remote dangling from the camera. I usually just delete such accidental shots and that was my inclination for the image above. However, the colors and patterns looked intriguing to me, so I kept this image, pushing the texture and colors in Adobe Lightroom with additional editing in Dxo Nik Color Efex Pro 4 to get this “abstract” image. I wish I could say that I shot this one purposely, since I like it; but I doubt that I could duplicate this image, even if I tried. Maybe my most interesting shots are totally accidental!
Fortunately, there were some clouds in the sky this morning to add some interest to the sky. The early morning light brings out the structure and color of the rocks here, which are otherwise not very colorful.
The two images above are mostly of the same subject, but it is obvious that moving around getting a different point of view can yield very different photos. I call the rock feature in the center of the one above “Satellite Dish Rock”, since the pointy rock just right of top center looks a lot like a satellite dish from a rear view point. I have another photo from the rear taken on another day, but I’m not sure that it is good enough to post.
I like the way the early morning light highlights the rocks in a diagonal pattern in this photo (best viewed large on Flickr). There are many interesting rock features in the background that may not be obvious, unless this image is viewed large.
I’m using the rock and its shadow on the bottom left to anchor the foreground and the drainage pattern beside it to lead the eye up the hill to the rock outcrops and the small window rock in the upper left.
It occurs to me, when looking at these photos, that some may think these just depict dirt and rocks. So why spend so much time and energy photographing such objects? As always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Not all of us will have an appreciation of the natural beauty of the land. Indeed, in midday light, much of this area is just bland dirt and rocks. But add golden hour light and a few clouds in the sky and I think it is beautiful, at least if captured in a well composed image. Whether or not I manage to capture an interesting image is always a matter of creative vision and I know that I do not always succeed in that endeavor. So your critiques are always welcome and may help me to improve my photography.
Thanks for following,
Ken
P.S. I will be traveling for a few days and posts may be irregular, since I may not have internet connectivity.
On day 4 of my March 2019 photography excursion, my son and I went to the little area on the north side of Bisti, which we think is actually on BLM land and is not a part of the designated Bisti wilderness.
I had spotted this rather smug looking rock on an earlier scouting of this area. The rock has a cartoon like face expression, maybe implying “I’m not talking to any of you”. [Not that rocks actually speak to me, at least not in actual spoken words].
One of the hoodoos that we also found on an earlier scouting here is in the above photograph. It is too bad that the sky was so drab and uninteresting on this day.
The photo above is an attempt to use the drainage pattern and the broad band of red pebble covered ground as leading lines into the background features; but there might be too much of the foreground in this case. It would have been good to have something else of interest in the near fore ground.
I like this smaller (but actually fairly large) feature in the center here with the sand pattern around it from erosion of that feature. I would have liked to have gotten a bit more isolation of this feature, but I could not find a suitable place from which to photograph it to achieve that on this day. Anyway, this composition does give a good sense of the environment here and the setting for this feature.
As a reminder, clicking on any of the photos in this post will take you to the photo on Flickr, where they will probably look better than on this web page or in your e-mail. Also big screens are better for viewing these photos than small, mobile devices.
Until next time,
Ken
P.S. I will be traveling again for a few days, so the next few posts might be delayed, since I do not know where or when I might have adequate internet connectivity.
{Readers might note that this post is out of chronological order. Apparently, I overlooked the draft of this post as I was publishing my blogs}.
My oldest son arrived in Bisti during the afternoon of my second day there. We decided to go to the place that I had scouted the previous afternoon for sunset photography.
It was another very cloudy day near sunset as we arrived at our destination and began preliminary shooting and picking our spots for sunset shots.
Adobe Lightroom now has a new Texture adjustment that I discovered while editing this photo. I probably pushed it too much in this photo, but I wanted to experiment with this new toy.
The tall feature in the upper right is a good navigation item here. It can be seen from far away and from various directions.
My oldest son is standing on the slope that I scouted the previous afternoon. Some late day light is apparent at the fringes of the rocks; but the cloud cover is making it brief and muted.
My shot from the slope, where my son was standing in the previous photo. Note the cloudy sky. There is golden hour light, but it is not as brilliant as one would like to see.
With such intermittant light it is always difficult to know what to do or where to be for the best photographic opportunity. One can be patient and stick to one place or move around, looking for other compositions. It is probably best to pick one composition and wait patiently. Sometimes I have patience, sometimes I don’t.
Even with brief and muted light, I like the image above with the contrasting highlights and dark shadows. I’ve used the alignment of the rocks and hoodoos as a leading line into the photo. This line also intersects with the line formed by the big hill in the upper center of the photo, which then leads the eyes to the sunset sky.
A cloudy sky can make for dramatic sunset silhouettes.
Another sunset silhouette with colorful, striated clouds. This image is cropped from a much larger image, most of which was just dark shadow in the foreground. Details in the shadows could have been brought out via editing, but there was really not anything there to add interest.
Early in the morning of my second day in Bisti, I returned to the area that I had scouted the day before for sunrise and early morning photography. In this area I had found rock forms similar to the Cracked Eggs of The Nursery, only not so many as in The Nursery.
This post will be long on photos and short on words. I will make a few comments on the photos and maybe the editing, but there is not much else to say about the area that readers have not already heard.
I began shooting just before sunrise, when the colors are muted due to minimal light on the subjects.
I attempted to make an HDR with multiple exposures of the scene above, but I ran into problems and now I do not recall exactly what edits were applied to get the image above, hence the ? in the image caption.
The image above is actually a crop from a much larger scene. As I edited that image, zooming in to check details, I noted that the erosional patterns at the base of the hill far in the background looked like giant feet. So I cropped that portion of the image to get the one above. This has given me an idea of how to shoot such patterns at the base of these hills, rather than ignoring them as I had been.
The above image is also cropped from a much large scene and is an HDR made from multiple exposures. The blackish hill in the upper left is one of the navigational markers that I use to get to this area. It is visible from a long distance in the mostly flat desert here.
This is one of the rocks that is shaped like those in “The Nursery”, where they are called “Cracked Eggs”.
Another of the Cracked Egg like rocks with a rounded rock behind it.
A monochrome version of the previous image. I think monochrome works well with these type images.
Another view of the same two rocks as in the previous two images with a bit more background.
More rocks in the miniature “nursery” area with colorful hills in the background just beginning to be illuminated by the early morning light.
I spotted these two small rocks as they were getting the first rays of early morning light and I was struck by how much the upper one looked liked a cartoonish animal character, maybe a bird or dinosaur. With a bit of a change in the perspective, the closer rock can be made to look like a body for the upper “head” rock.
A larger view of the area with the cartoon face rock, providing a setting for the smaller rock features. Note the long early morning shadows. Many years ago this area was a lush green forest and there were dinosaurs roaming here, perhaps making the creature faced rock more pertinent.
More rocks casting early morning shadows along with the cartoon faced rock with colorful hills in the background.
Another animal like faced rock casting early morning shadows.
More of the “Cracked Eggs” like rocks with long early morning shadows.
And even more of the “Cracked Egg” rock forms with long early morning shadows.
The image above is cropped from a larger view that I did not think had sufficient sharpness over the entire range of the original image. Anyway, that rock on the right has a unique shape and I am at a loss as to how to label it. It does look like some sort of creature, I just do not know what. Maybe you have an idea?
Cracked Egg or Hamburger Rock?
A monochrome version of the previous image. In editing these type images for monochrome, I like to keep the shadows dark, so I might bring down the shadows and/or darks in the process.
Just a couple of interesting rock shapes with early morning light highlights and shadows.
A closer view of the “Dog Face” rock.
A monochrome version of the “Dog Face” rock. Note how much darker I’ve made the shadows in the monochrome version.
I’m calling the rock in the foreground “Reclining Bear”, since the upper left most portion looks like a bear face to me.
I’m intrigued by the shapes of the shadows cast by the various rock shapes. I’ve noted that using a Detail Extractor filter in DxO Nik Color Efex Pro 4 brings out details in the shadows, which sometimes is preferable, but sometimes I like to keep the shadows darker, so this filter might not be a good choice in those cases.
A monochrome version of the previous image. Note how I’ve kept the shadows dark, not allowing any detail in the shadows.
More rocks and shadows. The rock on the left is in the previous image. I like the shapes of the shadows of the rocks on the left. Shadows sometimes take on a shapes that are surprisingly different that one might expect.
A monochrome version of the previous image. I’ve purposely kept the shadows deep and dark for a more dramatic appearance.
A row of rocks and their shadows. Note the uppermost rock shadow shapes and the middle rock jagged shadow shapes that one might not expect by looking at the rocks from this perspective.
A monochrome version of the previous post, emphasizing form, highlights and shadows.
A “lumpy” rock and its mitten like shadow.
A monochrome version of the previous image again emphasizing shape, highlights and shadows. Somehow the monochrome version seems more “artistic” and “mysterious” than the color version.
A group of rocks and their shadows.
A monochrome version of the previous image, emphasizing shape, highlights and shadows. Which is more appealing? I like the monochrome version best.
Many small rocks and long, early morning shadows.
A monochrome version of the previous image. Which image has more mystery?
A semi-circular pattern of rocks and their shadows. I like the way the shallow wash passes to the right around these rocks with the empty space on the left. The vignetting is added to focus the eye onto the main subject.
A monochrome version of the previous image for comparison without vignetting. I like the monochrome version best, but if I left off the vignetting in the color version, would that look better?
The only thing unusual about the large rock is its shadow, which has a “Halloweenish” appearance.
And Halloweenish should be monochrome, shouldn’t it?
Ok, I’ve beaten this topic to death. I can’t promise that I won’t do it again, though.
Next up sunset photos on day 2 in Bisti, March 2019.
I left Ridgeway Colorado Saturday morning, September 22, via the San Juan Skyway, deciding to take that route to the south towards New Mexico, rather than travel the most direct route via US550, AKA The Million Dollar Highway, which I had just been on in July. I wanted to see some different scenery and I was not disappointed, even though, I know US550 from Ouray to Durango would have been a great, if somewhat scary with its hairpin switch back turns on a mountain roadway with steep drop offs with no guard rails, route, too.
There were some really good fall colors, more reds than I had seen in the past few days, along the chosen route in southern Colorado. I pulled over at one scenic pull out, needing a snack and to stretch my legs for a few minutes. Others pulled in and out of this area, to take a look around, while I was there. Before I got out of my vehicle, I saw, via my side mirror, the driver of a van behind me taking photos of my vehicle through his windshield. After my snack, I got out and walked back past that van. The driver was just coming back and he commented that he really liked my vehicle. The Sportsmobile does get a lot of attention, so it is not one to travel in inconspicuously.
As I was standing by the guardrail, looking out over the roadside mountain view, a group of motorcyclists, decked out in their riding apparel, pulled into the parking area. Most of the bikes appeared to be Harleys, but I noted one near the middle of the pack that looked different. I walked over to it to get a better look and commented to one of the nearby riders that I had never seen one like it before. He pointed out that it was a Spyder, a three wheel motorbike, and the rider was a “middle age” (not sure what this is now) female, who was really chatty about her tricycle and pointed out another “sportier, more powerful” model near the back of the pack, also ridden by a female. I asked one of the riders, if they were members of a particular club and he said they were just friends out for a ride. Most were from Wyoming, but a couple, he said, were “Idaho Potatoes”. He then held up his phone, asking if I would take a group photo. So of course, I did. Afterwards, I wished that I had had the presence of mind to ask their permission to get a shot of the group for my blog,
Nothing else of note happened along the route, but it was an enjoyable ride through countryside that I had not seen before.
I arrived at the south parking lot for Bisti access early Saturday afternoon, which, as expected on a weekend, had a number of vehicles in it, including a full size tour bus. I parked near the entrance of the lot between the bus and a long wheel base Mercedes Sprinter RV. After setting up, having lunch, gathering my selected photo gear for sunset photos, checking my Camelbak and InReach Explorer GPS device with previously set routes across the wilderness area, I relaxed a bit. Later, seeing the tour bus driver, I went over and chatted a bit with him. He turned out to be a very talkative person. He was originally from the northeastern US, but had moved to Colorado years ago, as had other member of his family. I learned that the tourists he was driving around were Latvian. It was a small group, too small to be profitable, he said, but the tour company had to host them, nonetheless. They had a guide to conduct them around Bisti, which was fortunate, otherwise they would, most likely, have no idea how to navigate to any of the interesting sites within Bisti. I was surprised that they were out there during the heat of the day.
Around 5PM, I set out into the wilderness, heading to an area referred to as the “Nursery” or “Cracked Eggs”, to which I had not yet been on either of my other two trips to Bisti. I loosely followed a pre-determined route that I sketched out via a satellite map view of the area with points of interest marked as waypoints, using GPS coordinates gleaned from online searches and a few from earlier photos that I had taken with GPS coordinates recorded via a device attached to my Nikon D90 some years ago. The one way distance to my destination was about 2 miles. So the resulting hiking distance was a bit longer, since I scouted a few interesting looking areas just off of my route for future possible destinations, recording a few new waypoints on my GPS device and getting a few reference photos with my iPhone. My Garmin InReach Explorer connects via Bluetooth to an app on my iPhone, which has an easier to use interface than that of the GPS device itself.
Along the way, I encountered a few of the Latvian tourists heading back to the parking area. They were not youngsters, mostly female, all looked a bit bedraggled and did not respond to my greetings. Maybe they did not understand English very well or were just too tired, hot and thirsty to speak.
When I arrived at The Nursery, I was pleased to see that there was only one photographer there, since it is a relatively small area and multiple photographers there could easily get into each others way. I chatted with him for a few minutes, then left him alone to finish his shooting, while I scouted the area, being careful to stay out of his way. It was still a while before the “golden” hour prior to sunset and I was a bit surprised that he was shooting prior to that time, since he was obviously a professional. However, he appeared to be shooting close ups of details in the “cracked eggs”, so I think he only needed the shadows and the contrasts. When he finished shooting, he hailed me, saying “It is all yours”. We chatted a bit more about gear, cameras, photography, etc. before he began his trek back to the parking lot. In our conversation, I learned that the long wheel base Mercedes Sprinter RV in the parking lot was his.
Soon afterwards, I proceeded to shoot a few compositions, even though it was still a bit early. I noted a small Z shaped hoodoo and, as I looked it over, I thought that one edge of it had a facial shape and I could imagine the top of it as long hair streaming back from the head. So I’ve dubbed this the Bisti Automobile Hood Ornament Hoodoo. To shoot it from the most interesting direction and angle, I could not isolate it against the sky and I could see that the hillside in the background was going to be problematic, unless I just left the background blurry, which would be ok; but I did not want a blurry background. To bring out the hoodoo from the background, I made a couple of images to focus stack in Photoshop, then played around with a couple of ideas for merging the images. I decided that the best looking result was a color background with a monotone image of the hoodoo, blended in Photoshop. I selected “seamless color and tones” for the blending during the focus stacking process, which muted the color in the background, but I still think it contrasts well with the black and white hoodoo image in the foreground.
As I was shooting, a couple of more people showed up and we greeted each other. Recognizing a German accent, I struck up a conversation. The man (Wiener) and his daughter (Anna), who was a student (university, I surmise), were on a tour around the western US, having started in Los Angeles. He and his family had visited the US on numerous occasions and he commented on how crowded the National Parks are now as compared to his first visits.
As the sun went low on the horizon, we each went about our shooting, being careful to keep both ourselves and our shadows out of the other’s shots. Weiner did most of the shooting, but occasionally shared his camera with Anna. Both shot hand holding the camera, as most tourist tend to do and I expect they were shooting with their camera in Auto mode. There were clouds on the horizon, which intermittently blocked the best sun rays, so we would stop shooting and chat a bit, then resume shooting when the clouds moved away.
There was a beautiful sunset that afternoon, which we both shot, before heading back to the parking lot. When I put a reverse graduated neutral density filter into the filter holder attached to my camera lens, Anna was intrigued, as she was not familiar with the use of filters. I explained to Anna why that particular filter was useful for photographing sunsets; but I gathered that Weiner knew about the use of neutral density filters.
There was nothing of interest in the foreground for this sunset shot, so I was satisfied with a silhouette shot.
Anna, learning that I lived in Texas, asked if I had been to Big Bend NP. So I told them about my first disastrous visit there, as we hiked back to the parking area. (I should write a blog about that trip sometime. It was a very memorable experience, although not a really successful photography trip).
We arrived back in the parking lot, where Weiner and Anna were tent camping, just before it got really dark. They were planning to go out again in the morning, but not prior to sunrise, as I was. We said goodnight and I did not see them again, other than from a far distance the next morning, so I did not get a chance to learn more about them.
The photo compositional possibilities here are only limited by one’s imagination. I have so many photos that I like from this photo session that it is not practical to include them all in this post, so I have selected only a few to include here, but others will be put onto my Flickr page.